Google informs us the distance from Park Forest to the embattled Israel city of Ashdod is 6,180 miles, but the two communities are closely linked through the vision of the late Philip Klutznick, who imagined the future for both.
In the late 1940s, Klutznick, as head of American Community Builders, recognized a nationwide better housing need in this country for veterans returning to civilian life after World War II. This led to the creation of American Community Builders and to the purchase of an underused golf course and farmland some 30 miles south of Chicago on which the “G.I. Town” of Park Forest was created.
The first residents arrived in August 1948 and within five years after its 1949 incorporation, Park Forest won national recognition as an All-America City.
Some of the “pilgrims” who flocked to the new community joked they had to wait for the Mayflower, an allusion to the large truck line which carried the goods of new residents from somewhere else to here.
Every aspect of the new town seemed to flourish. It was the first village in the area to integrate although it took 10 years before it was accomplished. The outdoor plaza in the center of town became a shopping mecca for south suburbia, and other communities did not catch up for more than two decades.
The success of Park Forest helped Klutznick a few years down the road, when he was an adviser and investor in the planning and building of the city of Ashdod, an ancient port on the southern coast of Israel. This city was established on May 1, 1956, little more than seven years from the time Park Forest was officially incorporated.
The development of building a new city upon the remains of an ancient port was more complicated than merely erecting housing on vacant land. In his book “Angles of Vision,” Klutznick writes the ancient Philistine port of Ashdod was mentioned in the Bible as belonging to the tribe of Judah.
Israelis, he wrote, relied on biblical sources to locate neglected roads and passages. “So,” he wrote “why doubt what the Bible said (in the Book of Joshua) about the location of a great seaport.”
Historians maintained the Roman General Pompey once annexed the city to Syria and recent archaeological digs revealed remains dating back nearly 37 centuries. But by the middle of the 20th century, the remnants of a once great city were nowhere to be seen.
“When I first saw the place, it consisted of nothing but sand dunes, a few houses, and a small power station,” Klutznick wrote. “The emptiness of the place worked in its own way to fire my imagination about what could be.”
Creating a new city some 6 miles from the remnants of an ancient settlement called for more than a rental lease and a house key. Klutznick had to convince doubters in the Israeli government that a new seaport with a startup cost of $27 million in 1953 or about $311 million in today’s money, was needed. Doubters in the government may have been convinced when studies found that the facilities at Tel Aviv were not capable of handling modern ship traffic.
On Dec. 4, 1956, Israel signed on to the project with Klutznick. Some 1,500 housing units were built during the first five years with another 1,500 units to be built in the next five years. It was estimated Ashdod ‘s population could reach as much as 200,000.
Today Ashdod is the largest seaport in the country. High rise buildings dot the center of the city, and its population is 225.000.
This is being written more than two weeks after the first rockets from Hamas were aimed at Ashdod. The city still stands and is still a living tribute to Philip Klutznick, a man who served in the administration of presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter and who built lifelines as well as homes.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
